Seven teams of the UK’s best 13 to 18-year-old code-breakers from schools across the country have competed in an ‘I, Robot’ style cyber competition. The contest, created by industry firms and government, tasked the teens to intercept messages and infiltrate networks to defend a fictional ‘Cyber City’ from criminals.
Haileybury in Hertford won; High School for Girls in Gloucester came second and third St James Senior Girls’ School in London. The winning school received a £500 prize from AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association) Academic Trust, as well as varied cyber and educational rewards.
The final, titled Cyber Games, ran at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, the culmination of months of online competitions and coding exercises, where teams designed and submitted their own ciphers, then played against each other to climb to the top of the scoreboard. The final seven were the highest scoring teams.
The ‘Cyber City’ was a fiction of the near future, where all aspects of the city are digitally integrated and accessible via the Internet of Things. The city was under threat from a mysterious group of criminals and the teams had to race against time to repair damage, solve problems and investigate the perpetrators to save the city.
The 28 finalists were challenged to demonstrate their code breaking skills in front of industry figures in live timed tests of their technical skills under pressure. Emphasis was placed on teams to adhere to the ethical and legal checks that law enforcement must abide by, for example when setting up wiretaps. They were also tasked to analyse rubbish left in a hotel room (pictured) to socially engineer passwords to their computer systems; overpower attacks on robotic arms within energy facilities; protect defence barriers in the waterways to block their escape route and perform digital forensics on networks to block malicious attacks.
The Cyber Games competition forms part of the Cabinet Office backed Cyber Security Challenge UK schools programme, which provides bespoke teaching resources, designed by its sponsor consortium and partners, to help address the critical cyber security skills gap by sparking interest student interest in cyber.
The games were created by some of the names in the cyber security industry including: National Grid, aviation product firm Airbus Group, defence company Raytheon, telecoms company BT, global IT trade association CompTIA, Birmingham City University, University of Warwick, GCHQ, the National Crime Agency and social engineering consultancies The Antisocial Engineer Ltd and Jenny Radcliffe Training.
Jason Stanton, Schools Programme Manager at the Cyber Security Challenge UK said: “There is a critical cyber security skills gap in the UK and in order to address this once and for all, we need to spark an interest in cyber security as a career at a young age. We work with our sponsor community to design fun, practical and realistic challenges that teach the core skills in an exciting way and can be delivered by any school in the country. Our aim is for the pupils to leave today feeling inspired and seriously considering a career in cyber. By offering a pathway to future employment, this helps prevent gifted children drifting into cyber-crime, providing a positive outlet for their talents.”
Competition details and free teacher packs are available by signing up on the Challenge website: www.cybersecuritychallenge.org/education.
Comment
Rob Partridge, Head of the BT Security Academy, said: “It is vital that we act now to build the UK’s cyber security talent base at grassroots level. The UK cyber security industry will soon be worth £3.4 billion a year yet many children have never been told about the wide array of career opportunities in this field. The enthusiastic response to the competition that we have seen from teenagers across Britain demonstrates the huge pool of gifted youngsters that our economy could be tapping into.”
